Scituate forum hears plea to battle drug addiction with love

Monday

Mar 31, 2014 at 6:00 AM

Speakers said eliminating the stigma that comes with addiction is the first step to solving the South Shore's drug problem. "The antidote is hope and faith and love... We need to let (addicts) know .... they matter to us,” said one recovering addict.

SCITUATE – In front of a crowd large enough to pack the bleachers in the gym at the Gates School, recovering addict Meghann Perry, who grew up in Scituate, looked nervous. “I didn’t realize quite how much courage this was going to take until I got up here,” she said.

Perry was one of several recovering addicts, family members of addicts, and law enforcement officials to speak at a vigil organized by the Scituate Clergy Association and Scituate FACTS (Families, Adolescents Communities Together against Substances) coalition in response to four drug related deaths in the community in recent months.

Perry, like others who spoke, said that eliminating the stigma that comes with addiction is the first step to solving the South Shore’s drug problem.

When she was using, she said, she hid on the “fringes of society,” feeling “unwanted” and “unlovable. The antidote is hope and faith and love and acceptance in our community,” she said. “We need to let (addicts) know .... they matter to us.”

Pamphlets on Narcotics Anonymous and other resources in the community were available at the vigil.

In an emotional speech, Susan Trachik, whose son Christopher committed suicide in January after a prolonged struggle with heroin addiction, advised those in the audience to educate themselves, and not lose hope.

“I never thought I would need to know about these resources, and when the time came, I didn’t,” she said.

The vigil came just days after Gov. Deval Patrick declared a public health emergency in response to the growing heroin problem statewide. The declaration authorizes Department of Public Health Commissioner Cheryl Bartlett to make the overdose-reversing drug Narcan available without a prescription for the first time.

Patrick Cronin, program coordinator for the Massachusetts Organization for Addicts in Recovery, was saved by Narcan when he overdosed, a low point in his years-long battle against addiction to alcohol, OxyContin and eventually heroin. When his parents turned to Learn to Cope for support, he said, he began to understand the importance of programs that offer help to those affected by addiction.

Now, Cronin, who has been sober since 2005, hopes he can help addicts the same way the “amazing people (he) met in recovery” inspired him to get clean.

Cronin also focuses on preventative education for kids like him, who did not grow up around drugs and may not realize what they are putting in their bodies when they pop pills.

Referring to the first time he took an OxyContin, Cronin said, “That one pill sent me down a path of destruction that I would wish on no one.”